Peccinetti and Villegas encounter, Mendoza
At 3:42 a.m. on 31 August 1968, two Mendoza casino employees, Juan Carlos Peccinetti and Fernando Villegas, said their car stalled and beings from a hovering craft pricked their fingers and left markings on the vehicle.
1968 CE · -32.89, -68.83 · status: account
The account
The case was the high point of a wave of sightings in Mendoza that began in June 1968 and caused something like a 'flying saucer psychosis' in the city. The men described a craft floating about a metre off the ground with a beam of light shining down. Atomic Energy Commission experts reported finding magnesium on Villegas's Chevrolet, and the provincial courts kept a file on the case. The police chief said the authorities wanted to avoid a panic like the one caused by 'The War of the Worlds'.
The sceptical view
There were no independent witnesses. The 'inscriptions' on the car and the magnesium finding were never published in a form that could be checked, and the wave atmosphere in Mendoza made suggestion likely.